Video fuelled the aspiring star. The year YouTube made stars out of nobodies (and cats)

by Christopher Toh 04:46 AM Dec 31, 2011

So you wanna be a star? These days there are many ways to achieve that dream of becoming rich and famous. Or maybe just famous. Some methods are legal but could be embarrassing, like taking part in TV reality programmes. Some methods are questionable, like sleeping with George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez or Edison Chen (find out what your "good side" is first).

But the surefire way to become a celebrity in your own right is to upload a video (one that's worth viewing for any reason) on YouTube and watch your star rise. After all, many successful stars owe their success to YouTube: Justin Bieber, Zee Avi, Greyson Chance and Marie Digby, to name but four, have all been there and done that.

And many more are continuing the trend, whether they're professional YouTubers like Kurt Hugo Schneider, David So or Ryan Higa, or aspiring artistes who want to use YouTube as a promotional tool like Arden Cho, Clara C, Jayesslee or David Choi.

The key, of course, is making sure people keep watching your videos. You might want to take a few tips from 2011's top YouTube hits.

Among the entries in the Top 10 were a cute tabby cat and its kitten; an irritating animated feline called Nyan Cat; a funny kid in a Darth Vader suit and a Volkswagen Passat; twin babies having a gurgly conversation; a "talking" dog; a couple of cool music covers from Maria Aragon and KarminCovers; and a couple of offerings by the guys from The Lonely Island - breakout stars of the year, in our view, graduating from the SNL Digital Shorts stage to the Golden Globes stage.

The most-watched video on YouTube this year, however, was a music video by 14-year-old Rebecca Black, who recorded a highly annoying song called Friday. The video turned Black into the biggest YouTube star under 19. At one point she was even the most liked and disliked person on YouTube. While it says on her official channel that the video has only had over 15 million hits, it was only uploaded to that channel three months ago. Some sources say it's more like 167 million views across the board.

Friday read like a detailed musical diary entry that highlighted an exciting Friday in the life of a 14-year-old girl: Everything from the time she wakes up (7am), to what she has for breakfast (cereal), to choosing which seat to occupy in her friend's car (the empty one). And for those who don't know what the days of the week are, she helpfully lists them in order.

The song is an earworm now - and Black, despite being universally critically derided, still seems to have some power over netizens. She appeared in Katy Perry's video for Last Friday Night (TGIF) - and that video racked up 146,596,253 hits (as at press time) on Perry's own channel.

But, hey, like many things in the world of celebrity, what you see really is what you get.